“I remembered you,” she said, not knowing what she planned to say until it was out there, hanging in the air of the elegant room while the Greek night pressed against the windows, dark and rich. “I saw you at a ball in my father’s home when I was still a girl. I mention this because it was the first lie, that I saw you for the first time on your yacht that day.”
He took a sip of his wine, then lounged back against his chair. His eyes were so dark, yet still shone of gold. She took that as a good sign—or, at least, not a negative one. Not yet.
And so she told him. She stood like a penitent before a king, and she confessed every part of it. Peter’s mismanagement of the family finances and her mother’s frailty and ill health. Her need for her trust fund in order to settle her mother’s debts and take her somewhere safer and better, which Tristanne felt she owed her. Peter’s revolting ultimatums, and his obsessive hatred of Nikos, which had been one of the reasons she’d picked him. The things Peter had said about Nikos, and about Tristanne, and what she knew Peter hoped to gain from her liaison with Nikos. What she had expected to gain from her association with Nikos, and how surprised she had been by the passion that had flared between them.
She talked and she talked, a ball of dread growing larger and heavier in her gut with each word. As she spoke, Nikos hardly moved. He drank from his wineglass from time to time, but otherwise merely listened, stretched out in his chair with his hard face completely unreadable, propped up against one hand.
She realized that she had no idea what he would do. He was a ruthless, dangerous man—she had known that from the start, hadn’t she? It was why she’d chosen him. She had no doubt that he dealt with betrayal harshly. Like the dragon he was. What would he do to her?
When she was finished, she found herself staring down at her hands once more. She willed herself not to shake. Not to weep. Not to beg or plead with him. And not, under any circumstances, to let it slip that she was in love with him. She nearly shuddered then, at the very thought. She did not have to know what would happen next to know that would be like throwing gasoline on an open flame.
“And this is why you say you will not marry me?”
Her head shot up at the sound of his low, firm voice. She searched his face, but could see nothing save that same fire in his gaze. She could only nod, no longer trusting herself to speak.
Nikos leaned forward, and set his wine down on the wide glass coffee table. As Tristanne watched, panic and hope and fear surged through her in equal measure, making her feel light-headed. He stood up with that masculine grace that, even now, made her throat go dry.
“I do not care,” he said quietly, fiercely, closing the distance between them. He reached over and cupped her cheek in his hand, his eyes dark and intense. “I do not care about any of it.”
“What?” She could barely speak. Her voice was a thread of sound, and she knew she was trembling, shaking—finally breaking down in front of him, as she had vowed she would never do. Must never do! “How can you say such a thing? Of course you must care!”
“I care that you have been put in a position to do such things by your pig of a brother,” he growled at her, his voice low and rough, as if he, too, did not entirely trust himself to speak. “I care that had I refused your proposition, you might have made it to someone else.” His hand, hot against her skin, tightened a fraction. “I care that you are standing before me trying your hardest not to weep.”
“I am not!” she snapped at him, but it was too late. She felt all of her fear, all of her anger and pain and isolation and love, so much desperate, impossible love, coalesce into that searing heat in her eyes and then spill over, tracking wet, hot tears down her face.
She disgraced herself, and yet she could not seem to stop.
He murmured something in Greek, something tender, and it made it all the worse. Tristanne jabbed at her eyes with the back of one hand, furious at herself. What was next? Would she start to cling to the hem of his trousers as he made for the door? How soon would she become her mother, in every aspect?
It was a chilling thought. Her very worst nightmare made real—but then Nikos took her face in both of his hands, and she could think only of him.
“Listen to me,” he said, in that supremely arrogant way of his—that tone that demanded instant obedience. “You will marry me. I will handle your brother, and your mother will be protected. You will not worry about any of this again. Do you understand me?”
“You cannot order me to marry you,” she said, pricked into remembering her own spine by the sheer conceit of him, by his overwhelming confidence that her very tears would dry up on the spot at his command.
His hands tightened slightly, and his mouth curved into a very male smile.
“I just did,” he said. “And you will.”
And then he kissed her, as if it was all a foregone conclusion; as if she had already agreed.
She could have been putting on an elaborate act, but he did not think so, Nikos thought much later as he stood out on the balcony that hung high over the cliffs, far above the crashing waves. He did not believe that her body could deceive him on that level, even if she wished it to do so.
He turned to look at her, stretched out across the rumpled bed inside the master suite, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open as she slept. Her hair was a satisfying tangle around her shoulders, and her curves seemed to gleam in the moonlight—beckoning him with a siren’s call he could not seem to escape. He felt himself stir, always ready for her, always desperate to lose himself inside her once again. He felt something squeeze tight inside of his chest, and turned his back on her again, ruthlessly.
The night was cool, with a brisk breeze coming in off the sea, smelling of salt and pine. Nikos stared out at the dark swell of the water and the twinkling lights of the village below, and could not understand why he did not feel that kick of adrenaline, that hum in his veins of victory firmly within his grasp. He had felt it when he’d weakened the various Barbery assets enough that, following the old man’s death, it had taken the merest whisper to send them tumbling. He had celebrated that victory—remembering too well what it had been like when the situations were reversed and it had been the Katrakis fortune on the line. He remembered Peter’s gloating laughter when he’d called to announce the deal was off, the Katrakis money lost, Althea discarded, and all of it according to the Barberys’ plan. Nikos imagined the Barberys had celebrated that, too, all those years ago. He had made himself coldly furious over the years, imagining that very celebration in minute detail, reliving Peter’s vile words.
So why did he not now feel as he should? He had reeled her in, completely. He had been astonished when she’d made her confession to him, though he could not allow himself to speculate too much on what might have led her to unburden herself. He could only think of a handful of motivations, none of them coming from places he wished to think about. What was important, he told himself, was that she’d told him everything there was to tell about her brother’s plans. About her own part in those plans. And then she had made love to him like a wild thing, untamed and ravenous, moving over him in the dark of the bedroom as if she were made of fire and need, bringing them both to writhing ecstasy.
But Nikos did not feel that cool beat of triumph—he felt something else, something elemental and dark. Something wholly unfamiliar. Some deep-seated streak of possessiveness rose in him, roaring through him, making him question the scheme he had committed himself to so long ago.
You never meant to involve the girl, he reminded himself now, as if he still had a conscience. As if he had not rid himself of that encumbrance long since, as his actions with Tristanne made perfectly clear. You never meant to do what Peter did.
He thought of Althea then. Beautiful, impetuous, foolish Althea. His half sister by blood, though she claimed no particular family relationship to him unless it suited her purposes. He had been something like her bodyguard and her convenient escort, when she did not wish to be seen on the arm o
f their grizzled old father. And he, damn him, had been so desperate for her favor, for her approval. He had wanted to protect her, to make her smile, to prove to her that he deserved to call himself her brother even while their father treated him like the unwelcome hired help.
But she had not been interested in her feral half brother. She had not cared if he stayed to ingratiate himself with their father or if he disappeared back into the ghetto from whence he came. If anything, she had resented the fact that she was no longer the sole focus of their father’s attention—and even if what attention Demetrios Katrakis gave to his bastard son was negative, it was attention. She had not minded that Nikos was there, necessarily, but nor would she have cared particularly if he was not. Her indifference had only made him that much more determined to win her over.
But then she had fallen madly in love with Peter Barbery, and had sealed all of their fates.
Nikos let his hands rest on the rail in front of him, and forced himself to breathe. What was done was done, and there could be no undoing it. Peter had tossed Althea aside the moment Gustave Barbery had succeeded in cheating Demetrios out of a major deal. The entire Katrakis legacy had faltered. Althea had killed herself, and when it was found that she had been pregnant, Demetrios had blamed Nikos even more. For failing to protect her and the child? For surviving? Nikos had never known. A year later, Demetrios, too, had died, leaving Nikos to pick up the pieces of the Katrakis shipping empire.
It had all happened so fast. He had only just found his family, and the Barberys had ripped them away from him, one by one.
What was done was done, he repeated to himself. And what would be, would be. He had vowed it over his father’s grave, and he was a man who kept his promises. Always.
But still, he did not feel that surge of cold certainty that had led him here. That focus and intensity that had allowed him to plot and plan from afar, across years. Was it because, as a little voice in the back of his head insisted, doing what he planned to do to Tristanne made him exactly like Peter Barbery? Worse, even—for Barbery had promised Althea nothing, while Nikos had every intention of abandoning Tristanne at the altar.
He could see it play out in his mind’s eye, shot for shot, like he watched it in the cinema. Tristanne would walk down the aisle, dressed in something white and gauzy and ineffably lovely, and he would not be there. He would never be there. She would not cry, not in front of so many. He knew that the fact she’d cried in front of him tonight meant things he was unwilling to look at closely. But she would not cry in her moment of greatest humiliation. He could see, as if she stood before him, that strong chin rise into the air, and the tremor across her lips that she suppressed in an instant. He saw the smooth, calm expression she turned toward the crowd, toward the cameras, toward the gossip and the speculation.
And he saw the great bleakness in her chocolate eyes, that he feared she would never be rid of again.
He hissed out a harsh curse and let the night wind toss it toward the rocks far below, battering it into a million pieces.
This was different, he told himself fiercely. He had never intended to use Tristanne; she had approached him. How was he to refuse to use the perfect tool when it fell into his lap? After all this time? He thought of that odd, tender moment in the rain in Florence. He had been trying to forget it ever since it had happened. He was not like Peter Barbery, he told himself, even though he had the strangest feeling that when he did this thing to Tristanne, when he wounded her so deeply, so irrevocably—it might even wound him, too.
He, who had shut off that part of himself so long ago now that it was almost shocking to recall how much he had loved his spoiled, careless half sister, and how much it had hurt when she’d thrown that in his face. He had never thought anything could hurt him again.
“You are nothing to me!” she’d screamed at him when he’d attempted to console her after Peter’s vicious termination of their relationship. He had not known, then, that she was pregnant. That Peter Barbery had scoffed at her and called her a whore—then claimed his own child could have been anyone’s. All Nikos had known was that Althea had been in a lump on the floor of her room in their father’s elegant mansion in Kifissia, her face streaked with tears. Still, her eyes, as they focused on him, were narrow and mean. Like their father’s.
“Althea,” he had said, his hands in the air, trying to soothe her. He had thought he had shown her that he was trustworthy—the older brother she had never had. Someone she could love and lean on. That was what he’d wanted.
“I wish you had never been born!” she had thrown at him, cutting him as surely as if she’d thrown a knife. “This is your fault! You were the one who was too cocky, too sure—”
“I will make this right,” he had promised her. “I will. I swear it on my honor.”
“Your honor? What is that to me?” She had been scornful then, her pretty face twisted, spiteful. “You may have climbed out of the sewer, Nikos, but you still walk around with the stench of it clinging to you, don’t you? And you always will!”
Nikos shook the unpleasant memory away, gritting his teeth. Only a week later, she had been gone, her pregnancy uncovered. So much lost. So much wasted.
The Barberys deserved whatever they got, even Tristanne, the innocent one. He would not feel guilty for it.
He would not.
She was still half-asleep when he pulled her into his arms. Tristanne came awake as his body moved over hers, her own already responding to him, already softening for him, before she was fully aware of what was happening.
“You have yet to answer me,” he said softly, moving his mouth along the column of her neck. “I presume this is merely an oversight.”
“What if my answer remains no?” she said, her voice husky from sleep, and, she thought, the fact that no secrets remained between them. Not any longer. She felt…naked unto her soul. New.
Vulnerable.
A faint memory stirred then, of Peter in Florence, asking snidely after Nikos’s angle in all of this. She shook it away, concentrating instead on the feel of Nikos’s hard muscles beneath her hands, his hot mouth against her skin, her breast. What could she do? She had told him everything. She could only hope that he would do her the same courtesy—but even if he did not, it was not as if she could simply decide to stop loving him in the meantime.
Her body would not allow her to stop wanting him, not even for the barest moment.
“Yes,” she said, as he twisted his hips slightly and thrust deep into her, making her sigh with wonder at the perfect, slick fit.
“Yes, what?” he taunted her as, slowly, he began to move, stroking in and out of her, sending shivers of delight all through her limbs.
“You are a bully,” she said, gasping.
“I am merely emphatic,” he growled against her throat, nipping at her. “And very, very focused.”
And because she could do nothing else, because ripples of pleasure fogged her brain and coursed through her veins, she wrapped her legs around him and held on tight.
His eyes were dark, threaded through with gold, and yet seemed almost conflicted as they met hers. He dropped his gaze, and kissed her, taking her mouth with an intensity she might have called desperate in another man. He began to thrust faster, harder, holding her bottom in his strong hands to please them both with the deeper angle.
“Yes,” she said, because she could not remember, now, why she had denied him. She wanted to soothe him, to ease the darkness in his gaze. She wanted. “I will marry you.”
He did not speak again. He merely lowered his head, and then he took them both over the edge.
Chapter Fourteen
“WE MUST marry quickly,” Nikos said the following evening as they sat in the fading light, startling Tristanne as she feasted on tangy kalamata olives and sharp feta drenched in locally grown olive oil and spices. The sun had only just ducked below the horizon, and Nikos had only just returned from another day in Athens.
Part of her, she realized no
w, had wondered if the events of the previous night were real—of if she’d dreamed them. His words sent a thrill of anticipation through her.
“Why must we do anything of the kind?” she asked. “Surely we can have the usual engagement period. We would not want to suggest that there is any reason to rush, would we?”
“Will this turn into another battle, Tristanne?” he asked, his mouth curving into that familiar half smile, though there was a hardness to it tonight. “Will you explain to me what will and will not happen, at great length, only to acquiesce to my wishes in the end? Is that not the pattern?”
She wished there was not that edge to his voice, as if he meant his words on several levels she could not quite understand. She wished she did not feel slapped down, somehow. But she reminded herself that everything between them was different now. She had come clean and even so, he wanted to marry her.
Or so she kept telling herself, as if it were a mantra.
“Why do you wish to marry quickly?” she asked calmly, as if she had not noticed any edge, or even his usual sardonic inflection.
His dark eyes touched on hers, then dropped to caress her lips, then her breasts beneath the light cotton shift she wore. She ordered herself not to squirm in her seat; not to respond. Her body, as ever, reacted only to Nikos and ignored her entirely.
“Must you ask?” His voice was low. “Can you not tell?”
“I do not believe in divorce,” she said quietly, holding his gaze when he looked at her again. She did not know why she felt compelled to say such a thing, even while her heart fluttered wildly in her chest. “I realize it is unfashionable to say so, but I have never understood the point of getting married at all if one does so with an escape clause.”
One Reckless Decision (Mills & Boon M&B): Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past (Special Releases) Page 29
